Yamaha has not been near a MotoGP podium all season, yet inside the Iwata camp there is a growing belief that the corner is finally being turned.
The manufacturer tore up its long-standing inline-four philosophy over the winter and switched to a V4 engine, a gamble that has left it fifth in the constructors' standings after 10 rounds, 42 points adrift of Honda and still without a rostrum. But Pramac Yamaha team principal Gino Borsoi argues the raw gap to the front tells a more encouraging story than the results sheet.
"A one-second or 1.2-second disadvantage is already an incredible result for Yamaha," Borsoi said, framing a deficit that would once have been a crisis as a sign of rapid progress.
He is under no illusions about the scale of the project. "We need to completely rebuild our way of thinking; it's a completely new era for us," Borsoi said. Even so, he insists the early evidence has exceeded internal expectations: "In my opinion, we are better than I expected after last year."
There is hardware still to come. "According to our plan, we could receive one or perhaps even two more updates before the end of the season," Borsoi said.
The qualifying pace hints at where Yamaha's strengths and weaknesses lie. At the Dutch Grand Prix, Fabio Quartararo was just 0.504s from pole, underlining a chassis and aero package that can already fight over a single lap even as the engine gives away straight-line speed.
Turning that one-lap speed into race results is the harder task, as Alex Rins can attest. The Spaniard finished ninth at Assen, promoted from 10th after a rival's penalty, and admitted the grind of defending rather than attacking is wearing.
"It's a bit frustrating to race like this," Rins said.
He is also waiting, like everyone at Yamaha, for the promised upgrades to actually land. "They say before the end of the year," Rins said. "When, and for who, I don't know."
The urgency is sharpened by what is at stake for the factory's marquee rider. Quartararo, the 2021 world champion, has already signalled that patience has limits, conceding earlier in the year that he had misjudged how quickly the new bike could come good.
"I had a conversation with people from my team, engineers, but I think that I was a bit too optimistic about the potential of the bike," Quartararo said.
For now, Yamaha's season is a study in perspective. The stopwatch says 1.2 seconds; the standings say fifth and no podiums. Borsoi's job is to convince everyone that the first number matters more than the second, and that the next batch of parts will start to close the gap that remains.
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*Originally published on [Motorsports Global](https://motorsports.global/article/yamaha-v4-motogp-rebuild-borsoi-incredible-result). Visit for full coverage.*